quoteQ: Do you think that your team mate Kimi Raikkonen will push you more this season than he did last year - especially after team boss Maurizio Arrivabene’s ‘wake-up call’?

SV: He pushed pretty good but, was probably a bit unlucky at the beginning of last season. It is probably all too human that people’s memory is always very short lived - that they tend to forget. But if you look at the numbers it was rather close between the two of us and it will be close this year.

I really like, that he never has a bad word for Kimi. They push each other in a nice way

Kimi Raikkonen is not concerned by the lack of mileage he and Ferrari achieved at this week's Barcelona test compared to main rivals Mercedes.

Raikkonen completed 158 laps over two days and Ferrari managed just over half the mileage of rivals Mercedes. With a radically different car this year, Ferrari has clearly focused on aspects other than pure reliability testing and Raikkonen said the difference in mileage is not a concern.

"Why should I be worried?" Raikkonen said. "It is something that some other people do, and we do our own stuff. Obviously we would like to have done more laps; it was almost one day out of two [off the track].

"But it is a part of testing and we are getting ready to go racing, if there are some issues of some things to change or try, we will do it. It is up to us to make sure we are in the right position when we start racing.

"As always with a new car you have certain things you have to try, and test, and you have to be safe with a thing like that, and check everything very well. It takes time, it is painful, but it is better to check them well than have some big problems if you have not checked.

"It was a normal day. Obviously we would have liked to have run a bit more. We lost yesterday morning and this afternoon quite a bit of time, but that is part of a new car and testing, so it is getting there."

Raikkonen is sure there is much more to come from the Ferrari at next week's test.

"To get the first feeling of the car and I am sure that there is a lot of potential. It feels better than last year's package, and that was the aim. It is very early days, and we have not done a lot of set-up work with it. For sure we can improve it, so we are just doing the normal work."

I´m really not sure somebody is reading this here But whatever.... Kimi drove yesterday in the 2nd testing, Seb today. As expected: Kimi had trouble and Seb not Not that I wish something bad to Seb- but why all the time Kimi?

Okay, last day for Kimi today. Finally a good day. In the morning he tested the "halo", in the afternoon he run a race-simulation. To the halo: I´m happy they try to do much for the safety for the drivers. And Kimi said the view is "okay". But its hard to believe

Montmelò, 3 March – Kimi Raikkonen’s pre-season testing ended today at the Barcelona-Catalunya circuit. The main feature of Scuderia Ferrari’s afternoon programme was a race simulation, which was completed without any problem. By the end of the day, Kimi had racked up 136 laps, the quickest in a time of 1.22.765. Tomorrow, Sebastian Vettel will be back at the wheel of the SF16-H to bring the curtain down on winter testing.

Ferrari stepped up its preparations for the new Formula 1 season as Kimi Raikkonen set the fastest lap seen in testing so far and completed a race simulation on Thursday.

After starting his day with a trial run of the FIA's halo cockpit protection system the governing body hopes will be on all F1 cars in 2017, Raikkonen went on to set the pace on the third morning of the second test.

Using Pirelli's ultra-soft tyre, Raikkonen set a time of 1m22.765s, 0.045 seconds quicker than team-mate Sebastian Vettel's benchmark from day two of test one, which was also set on the new-for-2016 rubber.

Come the afternoon, the Finn put the SF16-H through its paces with a 66-lap Spanish Grand Prix run around Barcelona's Catalunya track.

Raikkonen's laptimes fared well against the simulations of Mercedes duo Lewis Hamilton on Monday and Nico Rosberg on Tuesday.

The run was put on hold for a short period as Romain Grosjean brought out the red flags for a second time with an excursion across the gravel, as he had done at the very end of the morning session.

The Frenchman made it a hat-trick late on to bring the day to an end six minutes earlier than scheduled.

Although Raikkonen finished comfortably quickest, Williams's Felipe Massa was only 0.428s adrift with an early afternoon run on soft tyres.

Massa managed to get ahead of two other drivers on ultra-softs in Force India's Nico Hulkenberg and Max Verstappen in the Toro Rosso, the former just under half a second down, and the latter just over 0.6s adrift.

Verstappen finished with the highest lap count of the day on 159, more than the two Mercedes drivers combined after Rosberg had run in the morning and Hamilton in the afternoon, the duo clocking up 144 laps between them.

Rosberg opted for a different run programme for his stint, working from a baseline with his car in order to focus on different set-ups.

It resulted in Rosberg completing 81 laps, the highest tally in the morning, before Hamilton took over.

Rosberg finished up fifth quickest, 1.3s down, with Hamilton down in 11th, 3.7s off the pace. Both set their times on mediums.

In between the Mercedes, Sauber's Felipe Nasr finished two seconds off the pace on soft tyres, with McLaren's Fernando Alonso in close attendance on super-softs.

Alonso also conducted a heavy-fuel race simulation of his own, and even had a blast on the ultra-softs in a productive afternoon.

Pascal Wehrlein posted Manor's best lap of testing to date, using ultra-softs, to finish 2.148s behind Raikkonen, with Red Bull's Daniil Kvyat ninth on softs, and a further two tenths of a second down.

Jolyon Palmer finally managed to get in some meaningful running in his Renault in the afternoon, after only completing 26 laps in the morning to add to the 79 over two days last week when he encountered a range of issues.

A late run on softs elevated Palmer over Hamilton to 10th, with the best of his 98 laps being a 1m26.224s.

Grosjean brought up the rear in his Haas, and despite his trio of red flags, still managed 78 laps after the American team finally overcame the turbo problems that had plagued it since Tuesday afternoon.

Jules Bianchi's father Philippe says that he is not convinced that the 'Halo' concept is the best solution for protecting Formula 1 drivers.

An early prototype of an F1 Halo design appeared on Thursday at Barcelona as Kimi Raikkonen tried it out for an installation lap to check on visibility.

And although there are clear safety benefits from the Halo, it is also widely accepted that it may not have been what was needed to save Bianchi's life after his 2014 Japanese Grand Prix crash.

Speaking to French television station CANAL, Philippe Bianchi welcomed safety efforts – but urged the sport to go much further in its quest to protect drivers.

"I consider that this is a step forward in term of safety," said Bianchi. "It is obvious that in the case of a wheel coming off, this system would be effective.

"However, in the case of small debris, like Felipe Massa [in Hungary 2009] and [IndyCar driver] Justin Wilson had, it wouldn't have changed anything. So this is a step forward, but it does not solve everything."Deceleration issue

The nature of Bianchi's accident at Suzuka, when he collided with a track vehicle, means that a cockpit hoop may have made no difference to the outcome of his crash.

Philippe added: "For Jules, it would have changed nothing, because it was an extremely violent deceleration that caused the damage that we know happened to his brain.

"I think developments of the HANS device, to better absorb big deceleration in a severe impact, could help in this case."FIA action

Philippe added that he would not wish to stop a concept like the Halo from happening if it did improve safety, but he has urged the FIA to not rest on its laurels after it is introduced.

"It is obviously not me who would speak out against something that brings more safety to the drivers," he said. "But the version of this 'Halo' system did not convince me and has yet to be perfected.

"Aesthetically, it's pretty bad, and I wonder what the driver gets to see behind the 'Halo'.

"The FIA wished to act after Jules's and Justin's accidents, but it must go further."Red Bull tests

The FIA is pushing on with plans to introduce the Halo concept in F1 from 2017, although a final design has not yet been approved.

Red Bull is due to trial its own version of the safety device – which is based more around a screen canopy that should allow better visibility for drivers.

The Milton Keynes-based team's boss Christian Horner believed that the design tried by Ferrari was not the right direction for F1 – especially because it would unlikely have changed the outcome of recent accidents in the sport.

"Personally I don't like it," he told Motorsport.com. "I understand that driver safety is absolutely of paramount importance, but for me I think I am a little bit more of a purist of open cockpit racing that has been there for 60 years - and there is danger associated with that.

"Of course we have to do everything we can to mitigate that. But the protection that is being looked at, the Halo concept, would not have helped Felipe Massa and, unfortunately, would not have helped Jules Bianchi."